I used to work doing delivery for Dominos, in the early Paleolithic before all of these damn app based food delivery schemes existed. Or, in fact, not only before you could get reliable maps on your smartphone, but before most people knew what a smartphone was.
Our store’s delivery service area included the city in which we were based and a significant fraction of the countryside it was nestled in. We’re talking, you go from blocks of rowhomes on numbered streets, 3rd Ave, 4th Ave, etc. and a quarter mile up the road all of the sudden you can only see four houses before the horizon and every mailbox seems to skip about 300 numbers.
So TL;DR: I wound up with a delivery out in the hinterlands to a place that I thought was on a little side road off of the main rural road out here, but actually turned out to be a sub-lot that was accessed by the main road itself, not the side street, and I guess the post office was just drunk when they handed out the house number. Whatever, says I, I am already parked here, it is a nice summer night, and it is but a short 50 yard trudge across the fallow field in between.
Which had a ditch in it.
Which I did not see.
Because some turkey had weed-whacked the tall grass in it to appear superficially at the exact same overall height as the surrounding level ground, possibly as a gag.
Well, down I went and in deference to not landing on the pizza I twisted around and wound up flat on my back in the grass, with the pizza bag and its contents on top of me, clutched to my chest. Upside down.
I thought for sure this was going to be a drive back to the restaurant for a remake, but I found by the light of my little flashlight that the pizza was perfectly intact, all toppings and cheese in place, and quite resolutely glued to the bottom of the box. Nobody would ever know.
…I stopped eating the pizza from work at that point.
I delivered in Wisconsin during the winter. Walked up some dude’s unsalted, fully iced walkway and my feet went out from under me and the pizza bag went up in the air. By some miracle, I landed on my feet and the bag landed in my hands. Asshole didn’t tip. I hope all the cheese was stuck to the top of the box.
I thought I knew preparedness and the general Boy Scout Way up until I started making a living as a delivery driver. I started keeping my Microspikes in my car precisely for this purpose. And a lot of other junk as well.
One of my favorite customer interactions (among many, and I am using “favorite” in the same way that Dwarf Fortress players use the word “Fun”) was during one particularly nasty blizzard during which a statewide state of emergency had been declared, I had a customer call and the following exchange happned:
“Yeah, I heard they lockin’ people up for being out on the road, so I need y’all to bring me [pizza] so I don’t get locked up.”
“So… You’re telling me it’s okay with you if one of my drivers gets ‘locked up’ instead?”
They hung up on me. (And for the record, no one was getting “locked up.” If the cops had to come yank your dumb ass out of a ditch, however, you were probably getting a fat ticket.)
How can the toppings so perfectly stay on the pizza after being shook like this?
I have a nice recipe for this! I got it straight from Google AI overview. All you need is glue…
Story time!
I used to work doing delivery for Dominos, in the early Paleolithic before all of these damn app based food delivery schemes existed. Or, in fact, not only before you could get reliable maps on your smartphone, but before most people knew what a smartphone was.
Our store’s delivery service area included the city in which we were based and a significant fraction of the countryside it was nestled in. We’re talking, you go from blocks of rowhomes on numbered streets, 3rd Ave, 4th Ave, etc. and a quarter mile up the road all of the sudden you can only see four houses before the horizon and every mailbox seems to skip about 300 numbers.
So TL;DR: I wound up with a delivery out in the hinterlands to a place that I thought was on a little side road off of the main rural road out here, but actually turned out to be a sub-lot that was accessed by the main road itself, not the side street, and I guess the post office was just drunk when they handed out the house number. Whatever, says I, I am already parked here, it is a nice summer night, and it is but a short 50 yard trudge across the fallow field in between.
Which had a ditch in it.
Which I did not see.
Because some turkey had weed-whacked the tall grass in it to appear superficially at the exact same overall height as the surrounding level ground, possibly as a gag.
Well, down I went and in deference to not landing on the pizza I twisted around and wound up flat on my back in the grass, with the pizza bag and its contents on top of me, clutched to my chest. Upside down.
I thought for sure this was going to be a drive back to the restaurant for a remake, but I found by the light of my little flashlight that the pizza was perfectly intact, all toppings and cheese in place, and quite resolutely glued to the bottom of the box. Nobody would ever know.
…I stopped eating the pizza from work at that point.
I delivered in Wisconsin during the winter. Walked up some dude’s unsalted, fully iced walkway and my feet went out from under me and the pizza bag went up in the air. By some miracle, I landed on my feet and the bag landed in my hands. Asshole didn’t tip. I hope all the cheese was stuck to the top of the box.
I thought I knew preparedness and the general Boy Scout Way up until I started making a living as a delivery driver. I started keeping my Microspikes in my car precisely for this purpose. And a lot of other junk as well.
One of my favorite customer interactions (among many, and I am using “favorite” in the same way that Dwarf Fortress players use the word “Fun”) was during one particularly nasty blizzard during which a statewide state of emergency had been declared, I had a customer call and the following exchange happned:
“Yeah, I heard they lockin’ people up for being out on the road, so I need y’all to bring me [pizza] so I don’t get locked up.”
“So… You’re telling me it’s okay with you if one of my drivers gets ‘locked up’ instead?”
They hung up on me. (And for the record, no one was getting “locked up.” If the cops had to come yank your dumb ass out of a ditch, however, you were probably getting a fat ticket.)
That sounds like around the time domino’s decided that pizza should taste like cardboard
Angular momentum
I can’t read those words and not think of classic Simpsons.